Darknet fence

Bilton's hunt for Silk Road is dramatic and, at times, almost unbelievable. It will make your favourite thrillers pale in comparison.

— STEVEN PRESSFIELD, author of The War of Art

Just try to put this book down. Masterfully reported and written, Bilton’s book drops you into the dark heart of the internet’s most famous crime. A first-rate thrill.

— JOSHUA COOPER RAMO, author of The Seventh Sense

Nick Bilton has produced a fantastic, true-life, present-day thriller. The book is a page-turner, and also packed with superb reporting and detail. It’s a vivid depiction of what happens when genius, ambition and vice collide, and a study in the complex dance between good and evil.

— ASHLEE VANCE, author of Elon Musk

Nick Bilton proves again why he is one of our best storytellers in technology, with a brilliantly assembled and rather terrifying portrait of the creator of an out-of-control marketplace and the strangely uncoordinated cops who took him down.

— STEVEN LEVY, author of In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

Bilton’s portrait of the brilliant, soft-spoken, and ultimately hardened Ross Ulbricht will linger long after you’ve sacrificed sleep to witness his takedown at the end of these pages.

— BRAD STONE, author of The Everything Store and The Upstarts

The unbelievable but true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom – and almost got away with it.

In 2011, Ross Ulbricht, a 26-year-old libertarian, physics graduate and amateur programmer, launched Silk Road, a completely free marketplace where people could trade anything – drugs, hacking software, fake passports, counterfeit money, poisons – and remain hidden from the government’s watchful eyes. It didn’t take long for word to spread about a website where anyone could buy and sell contraband with impunity.

The federal government launched an epic two-year manhunt for the elusive owner of the site, with no leads, no witnesses, and no clear jurisdiction. The investigators knew only one thing: that the man running the site called himself Dread Pirate Roberts.

Silk Road soon became a $1.2 billion enterprise, and Ross embraced his new role as a drug lord. He won a loyal band of allies in high and low places, who were as addicted to the danger and thrill of running an illegal marketplace as their customers were to the heroin being sold to them.

Through his network, Ross learned he was a wanted man and took drastic steps to protect himself, including ordering the murder of a former employee. While Ross was making plans to disappear forever, federal agents were racing against time to catch a man they weren’t even sure existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global internet.